Your Life is Yours, by Robert Gore
Actually, civilization is far worse. Not only are the non-productive kept alive, they’re in charge. They don’t produce, but they tax, regulate, redistribute (mostly to themselves), and mortgage the production of those who do. They wage stupid and costly wars that benefit their friends in the war and intelligence industries but increase the threats and dangers faced by everyone else. The plunge their nations into debt and have brought the global economy to the brink of ruin.
The honest and productive toil on, hoping against hope that their masters will leave them alone. As their liberties shrink while their masters’ powers increase, as the governments they fund grow ever bigger and more intrusive, they are told they have nothing to fear as long as they do nothing wrong, as defined by the masters, of course. That’s a vicious asininity. “Wrong” is always shifting and arbitrary, at the discretion of the masters, and the right—integrity and productive ability—only gets more taxed and regulated, condemned, and forcefully reminded of its duties to society, or more accurately, to the masters.
This is an excerpt. For the complete article, please click the above link.
The honest and productive toil on, hoping against hope that their masters will leave them alone. As their liberties shrink while their masters’ powers increase, as the governments they fund grow ever bigger and more intrusive, they are told they have nothing to fear as long as they do nothing wrong, as defined by the masters, of course. That’s a vicious asininity. “Wrong” is always shifting and arbitrary, at the discretion of the masters, and the right—integrity and productive ability—only gets more taxed and regulated, condemned, and forcefully reminded of its duties to society, or more accurately, to the masters.
This is an excerpt. For the complete article, please click the above link.
I would gladly leave "civilization" behind for an island where I could live by Galt's pledge.
Another article for the archives. :)
Regards,
O.A.
Much of the second half focuses on how the world economy suffers from wasteful spending and poor monetary policy. The wasteful spending is huge, but this post presents it as if there are specific people who benefit only from waste while the righteous do not. In reality it comes in the form of things like gov't awarding a cost-plus contract that allows a business to reconfigure their production line more than they would if it were fixed bid, but they're not vicious moochers. There are real stories of people making a living out-and-out milking the gov't, but if we made them all disappear it would only put a dent in the problem. The problem is gov't being a third of GDP, regardless of how well it's managed.
The part about monetary policy I'm less clear on. My thought is if people are using money to make voluntary trades and it appears to have a predictable decay in value that's easy to put into a spreadsheet, then who cares. You posted something a year ago, though, that asked what properties should money have, NOT what we've had all our lives, but what if we were creating a monetary system from scratch. My response to that is it wouldn't be a system run by the gov't. This has me thinking that it's time to privatize money, just as we privatized phone carriers when the technology for competition emerged.
Link to the Real Money article: https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
I felt depressed at the realization of rescue.
I will defend myself, thank you.
Thanks, straightline, this was one of your best ever. Required reading everywhere.
I was really getting into it too.
https://www.amazon.com/Most-Dangerous...